


Hanging the Stars

by lyricwritesprose



Series: Stars [2]
Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Astronomy, Crowley has Feelings about stars, Happy Ending, M/M, Some angst, companion fic, largely stands alone though, nonsexual intimacy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-07
Updated: 2019-11-07
Packaged: 2021-01-24 14:23:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,404
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21339685
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lyricwritesprose/pseuds/lyricwritesprose
Summary: A chance incident with Wensley leads to a revelation for Aziraphale, and painful memories for Crowley.  A companion fic to "Sharing the Stars," this explores what happened between Aziraphale and Crowley shortly following the Incident With The Poem.  The story is spun off from another fic, but stands alone.
Relationships: Aziraphale/Crowley (Good Omens)
Series: Stars [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1538347
Comments: 56
Kudos: 323
Collections: Good Omens Celebration





	Hanging the Stars

It started with Wensleydale. Wensleydale, who arrived in Miss Device’s garden almost in tears because of what a teacher had said to him. Wensleydale’s teacher had brought in a favorite poem, and Wensleydale, as near as Aziraphale could tell, had a fundamental philosophical conflict with it.

“It was called ‘When I heard the learn’d astronomer,’” Wensley explained. “And then he talked for a while about how right the poem was, about how facts and figures and science saps the magic out of everything, and I _ argued _ with him, and he said that I was the sort of little boy who puts pins in butterflies and never cares that I’m killing them and I think I’m going to get a bad mark.”

This was, to Aziraphale’s mind, profoundly unfair. Miss Device said it before he could. Wensley was—well, Wensley wasn’t an _ uninteresting _ boy, but he was the sort of boy who practiced dutifully for a spelling bee. It seemed distinctly uncharitable for a teacher, of all people, to rail against carefully collated facts when that was how some of his pupils’ minds worked.

And, indeed, Wensley was going on about facts. Star facts. Classifications. Human classification systems, of course, but Aziraphale knew the stellartifexes had made divisions of their own. “ I don’t suppose,” Aziraphale said, “it occurred to Whitman that art and science aren’t mutually exclusive. I remember—well, it’s rather sordid, but Michelangelo wouldn’t have been able to carve the brilliant human forms he became famous for if he hadn’t crept into graveyards and done dissections. That’s science, informing art. And as for the stars, the angels who created them—I never knew any of the real masters, many of them joined the Other Side just because of how it fell out—but I did once talk to someone who had helped make some very small stars, and they told me more about fluid dynamics than I ever thought an angel could know.”

It had, in fact, been an extremely tedious discussion that Aziraphale had escaped from as soon as possible. But he wasn’t going to say that.

“And,” Wensley said, “there are a lot of things we wouldn’t even _ know _ about without science. I mean, there’s this.” He tapped out something on his mobile. “They had to put a telescope in space to know what it really looks like, and imagine the maths _ that _ took.”

Miss Device took the mobile. “I’ve seen pictures of that before, I think. What is it exactly?”

“NGC 6543,” Wensley said, predictably citing the number. “It’s called the Cat’s Eye Nebula. They don’t have anything to do with planets, but they call them planetary nebulas because—”

“Serpent’s Eye Nebula,” Crowley said, sounding strangled.

Aziraphale looked over at him quickly.

Crowley, he realized abruptly, hadn’t said a thing since the discussion turned to stars.

He looked—somewhat stricken. But you wouldn’t necessarily know that if you didn’t know Crowley. If you hadn’t repeatedly pushed him away out of fear for both him and yourself and had seen the look on his face, the look that meant, _ I am trying with all my might to tell the world that I don’t care. _

“Actually,” Wensley said, insensitive to the drama, “they really do call it the Cat’s Eye Nebula—”

Crowley lunged across the table, snake-fast, and grabbed Wensley by the shirt. _ “Ssserpent’sss. Eye. Nebula,” _ he hissed.

And then he let go of Wensley and fled. Knocking over his chair in his haste.

Aziraphale realized with a lurch that he had never asked Crowley about what he did before he slithered up into the Garden. He had never asked Crowley what he had done before the Fall.

He had certainly never asked if Crowley _ missed _ it.

He followed Crowley down the lane to the Bentley, half-afraid that Crowley would drive off without him. But he was still waiting when Aziraphale got there, hands gripping the steering wheel, knuckles white.

Aziraphale got in the car and sat for a moment, unsure what to say. There were times when he felt a fierce need to apologize to Crowley, but this time he hadn’t actually done the harm and Crowley wouldn’t have accepted an apology anyway.

“I didn’t know you were a stellartifex,” he said finally.

For a moment, he didn’t think Crowley was going to respond. Then he said, “Nebulas, specifically.”

Aziraphale barely knew the difference between a nebula and a comet. And, right now, he was bitterly regretting that. “Nebulas. I didn’t know you made nebulas.”

Crowley nodded.

“The one the boy had a picture of, the Serpent’s Eye Nebula . . .”

“I’d hardly call it that if it wasn’t one of mine, would I?” The muscles in Crowley’s jaw were tight. “It was my last.”

“Your . . .”

“Because all of a sudden, resting and planning my next project, right, when guess who rolls up and _ compliments my work. _ Do you know what it’s like, to have the acknowledged grandmaster of your craft—who also happens to be Heaven’s brightest Archangel—admire something that you’ve created? Not that difficult, after a beginning like that, to get someone talking about their _ doubts and questions, _ is it. Especially considering.”

Aziraphale wasn’t sure what _ especially considering _ meant. At a guess, it meant, _ especially considering it was Lucifer. _ He had never met the Archangel, but the words _ terrifyingly charismatic _ had been thrown about even before anyone had properly understood what _ terrifying _ meant.

“I didn’t realize,” Aziraphale said very quietly.

“Yeah. Well. I don’t talk about it, do I? It was another life. Another person.” Crowley was quiet for a moment. “Funny thing is, I don’t know whether he _ actually _ liked the nebula, or whether he just wanted to get me talking.”

Aziraphale was silent. He had never talked about Lucifer with Crowley, before. He had never asked how Crowley had been convinced or manipulated—had it been manipulation?—to join the Rebellion. He knew that Crowley, eternally brave and daring Crowley, was actually _ frightened _ of Lucifer, but he had never asked what came before that fear. Admiration? Mentorship? He wasn’t sure he wanted to know. 

“I don’t suppose I could see it?” Aziraphale ventured. “Your nebula.”

For a moment, he thought he had gone too far.

Then Crowley said, “Not the way it’s supposed to be seen, not through an ordinary telescope. The Hubble comes closest.”

“How does one arrange to look through the Hubble?”

“You don’t. It sends pictures back to Earth, the humans assemble them on their computers. No, the _ best _ way to see it would be for me to give you a vision. And we’ve never done that before.”

Aziraphale thought about it. “Maybe we should,” he said.

A muscle jumped in Crowley’s jaw. He didn’t say anything.

Aziraphale gave Crowley the look. Aziraphale had known for centuries: if he looked open, and pleading, and soft, Crowley would voluntarily ride a horse for him.

But Crowley would need to be looking at him for the look to work, and he very deliberately wasn’t. Instead, he started the car.

Aziraphale let the look lapse, feeling guilty. He truly didn’t want to push Crowley into something that would be uncomfortable for him, but—

He didn’t just want to see. He didn’t just want to appreciate the beauty of what Crowley had done. He wanted Crowley to _ show _ him. Like a gift. Like a blessing.

§

Aziraphale had thought he was being discreet in his longing. Crowley, apparently, didn’t agree. They were looking at a cottage, part of their ongoing project of finding a retirement home together, and Aziraphale had made what he thought was an innocuous remark about setting up a telescope outside, and all of a sudden Crowley had him backed up against the wall. “You want to ssee it?” he demanded. “You want to let me into your mind, where I could show you anything I wanted? Visions of the Fall, even?”

“You could,” Aziraphale admitted. His eyes were on Crowley’s lips.

“Do you know how many humans I’ve tempted with visions? Do you know how many humans I’ve _ attacked _ with visions?”

“No idea,” Aziraphale murmured.

“I’m not like them in Heaven. I’m not even like the ones in Hell. I’m _ creative. _ Do you have any idea what that means?”

“It means,” Aziraphale said, very quietly, “that if you wanted to destroy me with this, you could.” He carefully untangled Crowley’s hand from his collar and put it on his face. He wasn’t sure how to say what he wanted to say—_ being in danger from you makes me feel safe, _ that wasn’t just a paradox, it wasn’t really true, because he knew that Crowley would never harm him—so instead, he just said, “Show me.”

The image slammed into his brain.

It wasn’t an image a human could have got from their telescopes. It wasn’t something that human eyes could have ever processed. Aziraphale saw the nebula from all directions, a complete spherical perception of it. Billowing veils of diaphanous gas, distinct shells of them, each one delicately colored with trace elements. Each one made incandescent by the stripped stellar core, the heart of the star that had cast the billows into the void. Every element was a different color, a different rainbow of colors, colors that no human had ever seen or could comprehend. A planetary nebula was a star violently, beautifully deconstructing itself, and for a dizzying moment, Aziraphale held the mathematics that made it possible, and they, too, were art—

He had slid down the wall, and Crowley was bending over him.

“Have I ever told you,” Aziraphale blurted out, still dazed, “how beautiful your mind is?”

Crowley startled, and then fell back on his typical response to compliments. “Shut up.”

“Because I think I should. You hold such glories inside you, Crowley. You have such beautiful eyes. And I don’t just mean from _ my _ perspective, although that’s true too. I mean looking from the inside out.” Was he even making sense? Aziraphale couldn’t tell.

“I said _ shut up. _ It’s—it’s not even _ mine, _ it’s some other angel, long ago, someone I don’t recognize.”

“Complicated. Chaotic. Making beauty out of destruction. Did you invent that technique? Boiling off the top layers of a star, to—to—” The knowledge of how it had been done was part of the vision, and it was fading, which was unfortunate, because Aziraphale wanted it. Wanted all of it. Wanted the fire of Crowley’s mind with a greed that was staggering even by his hedonistic standards. “And the _ colors. _ Did you invent the colors?”

“Aziraphale, stop it.”

He meant it. Aziraphale stopped.

After a long moment, he said, “Thank you so much for showing me.”

Crowley looked away. “Yeah. Well.”

And that’s all he wanted to say about it.

§

Two days later, though, Crowley disappeared for part of the afternoon and returned with a poster. The poster said _ Cat’s Eye Nebula, _ which Crowley peremptorily changed to the proper name. “For the kid,” he explained.

“I think that’s an excellent idea,” Aziraphale said, and looked at the poster. “It doesn’t do it justice, but still.”

“I don’t care about doing it justice. It’s just a ball of gas. But he’s not a bad kid. Wensley. Needs someone better than that idiotic teacher.” Crowley thought about this. “Could stand to be a bit more of a hellraiser, mind you,” he allowed. “I should get him mixed up in a little vandalism.”

Aziraphale thought about it. “He said he didn’t have a telescope,” he reflected.

Crowley gave him a wry look, as if he knew where Aziraphale was going with this. “Neither do I.”

“Whyever not?”

“Because it’s like trying to watch a movie through a keyhole. You don’t see a tenth of what there is to see. And the last thing I want to do is stand alone in the middle of a field somewhere, _ thinking. _ I hate thinking.”

Would it be unkind to draw attention to that particular staggering lie? “But you like showing humans,” Aziraphale said. “Galileo . . .”

“It was his idea, I barely had anything to do with it.”

“You provided moral support.”

“He didn’t need it. Try to smite Galileo with a lightning bolt, and the ashes would pull themselves up and tell you that they don’t think much of your argument. No, I was just hanging around because I saw that he was about to shake things up, and I didn’t want anything nasty to happen to him before he set the cat among the pigeons. Heaven always did like its geocentrism.”

“They thought it increased faith, as I recall,” Aziraphale said. And Heaven had been absolutely convinced that faith and virtue were linked—the evidence of the Crusades entirely to the contrary.

“Do you know what he said about Saturn?” Crowley asked. “Galileo, I mean.”

“What did he say about Saturn?”

“He thought it had _ ears. _ He couldn’t make out the rings properly, so he thought they must be these two gargantuan bulges on either side of the planet. Or else moons, he wasn’t sure, but he was certain _ something _ funny was going on with Saturn.” Crowley stuffed the poster back into its carrying tube. “Could get a better telescope now, of course.”

“They’ve probably made all sorts of advances,” said Aziraphale, who knew nothing about telescopy and had resolved to change that fact.

“They put computers in them. They’ll scan the sky for you, compensate for the Earth’s rotation.”

A fact that Crowley wouldn’t know, Aziraphale realized, if he hadn’t considered buying a telescope. Looked in a telescope catalogue—did they have telescope catalogues? They must do. Perhaps found the one he liked best, and gone back to it, and then—not purchased it.

“I can’t imagine,” Aziraphale said cautiously, “that you’d have very much time for thinking if you tried to teach telescopy to four children. And myself.”

Crowley was silent for a moment. “You could bring a picnic basket.”

Aziraphale was reluctant to have the Them intrude on a picnic, when he mostly wanted to have picnics with _ Crowley, _ and the years in which there had been no picnics drastically outnumbered the years _ with _ picnics, and there hadn’t been nearly enough picnics to make up for that. But if showing the stars to others was how Crowley could stand to look at them . . .

Aziraphale wanted to give Crowley the stars. Give him back the stars. On whatever terms he could bear to accept. “I’d like that.”

“I’ll buy a telescope,” Crowley said.

  


**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [[Multivoice Podfic] Hanging the Stars](https://archiveofourown.org/works/25204981) by [AirgiPodSLV (AirgiodSLV)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/AirgiodSLV/pseuds/AirgiPodSLV), [Djapchan](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Djapchan/pseuds/Djapchan), [epaulettes](https://archiveofourown.org/users/epaulettes/pseuds/epaulettes), [mahons-ondine (mahons_ondine)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/mahons_ondine/pseuds/mahons-ondine), [platinum_firebird](https://archiveofourown.org/users/platinum_firebird/pseuds/platinum_firebird), [Tipsy_Kitty](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tipsy_Kitty/pseuds/Tipsy_Kitty)


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